Electrum pros,
Here is my situation:
I have some btc in offline, encrypted cold storage using the bitcoin qt and xp. The wallet.dat file has been backed up and securely stored.
I only have this one cold storage wallet but have created multiple recving address in a sorta misguided attempt to break my cold storage up into chunks.
Using Electrum, I would like to keep my cold storage btc offline in any scenario, but I don't like the idea of needing to keep backups of my btc qt wallet.dat files and
I'd like to get away from using btc qt. entirely.
Do I need to install btc qt on my online cpu, import my wallet.dat file from my cold storage, sync with the block chain then redistribute my btc between my online and offline Electrum wallets?
Doesn't this method expose my cold storage coins to the evil interwebs?
What might you all suggest to evolve my storage situation in the most secure way?
Thanks so much for any assistance.
First you will want to create a cold storage electrum wallet, and I assume you know how to do that safely
(the computer that generates the wallet should be one that was never online and never will be).
Then generate an OFFLINE SIGNED TRANSACTION using qt. Copy that signed transaction only
onto an online machine and broadcast it. The transaction should be sending your coins to
one of your electrum receiving addresses.
By using offline signed transactions, your cold storage never leaves cold storage. That
is the safe and proper way to move coins out of cold storage.
